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Some people were asking about the house rules that I use in our campaign, so I am trying to add them all here. Some of the stuff is a bit more complicated, so I might just summarize it and add it in later if there is more interest. And also if I recall something else that we do. A lot of this stuff is the way we have played for years, so it is not always easy to remember what is the house rule and what is the RAW, without checking!

I have organized this roughly in the way the chapters are in the KAP 5.2 book, but not slavishly so. The most important house rules, IMHO, are II.10, IV.6 and IV.7.

I.) CHARACTER GENERATION

This is largely similar to KAP 5.2, with some key differences.

I.1.) Attributes
There are three methods to choose from, but in all cases, APP gets rolled randomly (3d6, but I usually give a reroll if it is below 8, and I allow -1 other attribute = +2 APP). The three methods for the other four attributes are: a) Point-buy: 50 (the default 60 - 10 APP); b) Point-buy: 43+2d6 (giving a range of +-5 around 50); c) Random rolls: SIZ 1d6+12, DEX 1d6+7, STR 1d6+10 and CON 1d6+9. Each player can choose at chargen, which method they wish to use for the attributes.

I.2.) Traits and Passions
We are overly generous with Traits, as we give extra 6 points to distribute to the Traits. However, this is counteracted a bit by the lower Passions, as instead of 15s, we roll 2d6+6, except Hate (Saxons) which is 3d6. You still get 3 points to add to Passions, and +1d3 Homage when you become a vassal knight. Furthermore, while we do not allow the son to inherit the father's statistics, traits and passions, we do state that any Trait or Passion the Father* had at 16+, can be raised up to that level at half price during chargen. So if Father had Homage 18, and you rolled Homage 12 for the Son, you can use 3 points and get it to 12+6 = 18.

* Father = the player-character parent, who could be the Mother instead. There have been some talk about having the half-priced Famous Traits from the Parent, but taking the half-price Famous Passions from the Mentor (the knight who trained the PK through squirehood), which might instil a fun little 'minigame' of trying to match your son with a knight whose passions you agree with. However, we opted to keep it simple and just use the Parent.

I.3.) Skills
In the Skills, we have three major differences.

First, all the PK's weapon skills start from 10*, no questions asked. Non-knight (i.e. Lady) player character's skills start from 5, but they get extra 10 skill points as 'compensation'. This change has not had a big impact on the game, but it does give the PKs a reasonable chance to use a boar spear or grab a fallen weapon if need be. Mainly, they just use their main weapons (Sword/Axe/Mace and Lance) and if Sword is their secondary, they bring it to 15.

Secondly, in the current campaign, we allow the low skills to be raised half-priced up to 10. So Play 2 -> 10 costs only 4 points. This has had a bit more of an impact, as it does encourage people to rather bring a low skill to 10 than to go from 15 -> 16 in another skill. Although the combat skills are still primary improvements. It has not been especially unbalancing, though, in my mind.

Thirdly, we are bundling some skills and dropping others away. We have joined Flirting & Romance into a single skill, the same with Read/Write & Clerk and Battle & Siege, and taken Tourney (replaced by Courtesy when it comes to proper knowledge of the rules) and Diplomacy (we use Courtesy and Orate instead) out altogether. As you see, some of those rebundled skills were added in expansions, rather than in basic KAP 5.2, too. Oh, Swimming defaults to DEX*, and you can buy it up from there if you wish. (No one ever raised Swimming anyway. This way, I can at least throw some aquatic obstacles in their way and not result in Total Party Kill.)

Oh, fourth thing is that we do not use the cultural Speciality Skills from BoK&L, but since I said this was based on KAP 5.2 anyway, no problems there.

* As some of you may be aware, I have become a proponent of skill defaults from Attributes, using something like DEX/2 or APP/2 for pretty much all skills. We have not done that yet, and it might be difficult to implement that fairly while we are in mid-campaign**. But something to think about.

** The other thing I dislike is the Family Characteristic, since it locks in the character into 'the family trade'. If you have Hunting +5, then you very much need to become the group hunter, since you can get Hunting to 20 at chargen, a huge advantage over people who do not have that Family Characteristic. I am seriously thinking of just removing it and giving 5 skill points extra instead. However, as with the above one, this is a difficult change to do in mid-campaign.

I.4.) Characters younger than 21
As a general rule, we just take off one of the (yearly training) choices on Step 3 (p. 38) for each year they are younger than 21. Works easily enough, as we seldom have characters that are younger than 18 anyway.

II.) GAME SYSTEM

We have tweaked some things in the game system, too.

II.1.) Criticals, fumbles and confirmation rolls
Regardless of the skill, a roll of 1 is always a potential fumble, and 20 is always a potential critical (except if your skill is 1 or less, in which case it becomes just an ordinary success). Furthermore, in a crit-crit tie, we downgrade both to normal successes and compare the actual modified rolls: so if Skill 25 rolls 18+5=23 and Skill 20 rolls 20, this becomes a normal success for 23 and a partial success for 20.

If you roll a critical, reroll to see if it is a full critical (success, crit) or a half critical (failure, fumble). This only matters in combat skills (see below). For non-combat skills, both count as criticals. Also, if the skill is already 20+, ignore this reroll.

If you roll a fumble, reroll vs. skill-10. If you succeed (or crit), it is just a failure. If the skill is 30+, ignore this reroll, it is just a failure.

II.2.) Flat Critical damage, no doubling
Instead of doubling the damage on a critical, a full critical does +4d6 damage, a half critical +2d6. This makes it slightly more likely to survive big monsters like Giants.

II.3.) Opposed resolution when both skills are above 20
When both skills are above 20 (with modifiers, if any), the lower skill is reduced to 20 and this amount is subtracted from the higher skill as well. So if the skills are 29 and 30, they become 20 and 30-(29-20) = 21. This is to counteract the 'tink-tink-boom' where two high skill opponents fighting results in the beheading (crit hit) of the other (who failed to roll a crit) in a few swings. By bringing both skills down closer to 20, the criticals remain a minority.

II.4.) Lance damage +1d6: just what it says, a charger does 7d6.

II.5.) Getting up
Lightly armored characters still need a round to get up on their feet. So a bandit/Saxon Raider who is knocked down will fight a round with -5/+5 penalty, same as a knight. However, I do not let this combine with mounted vs. unmounted bonus, since +10/-10 is a bit too much of an overkill.

II.6.) Uncontrolled Attack
This gives only +5 now. +10 unopposed was a bit too much of a good thing, even though KAP5.2 explicitly states that the shield bonus of the defender still applies. It still cancels out Defensive, both of them will fight normally with their NORMAL skills. Giving the +10 to both would again tip the advantage generally to the attacker, since usually this tactic is employed when the other person is already in trouble (knocked down and/or rearming).

II.7.) Passion Inspiration & Madness
Instead of +10, it gives only +5 on a success and +10 only on a critical (no doubling of skill). +10 was a 'I win' button for the PKs if the NPKs didn't have a passion to match, and vice versa. On the other hand, we don't impose Shock for failing, since we noticed that this encouraged the Players to use Inspiration to make an even fight into a curb-stomp, but avoid using passions if the odds were against them, since they were afraid of getting a Shock for failing. In short, in the situation where they most should have used the Passion, they opted not to. Instead, they become Melancholic if they fail in the impassioned task.

As for Madness, I am very very tempted to save that for Passion criticals when you fail in your task. That feels much more thematically correct to me. You go Mad because despite your bestest effort, you failed to protect your loved one. I might use Shock on a fumble, though.

Note, though, that I am quite strict when it comes to allowing a Passion to be used. It is not just enough to be fighting alongside your fellow PKs to allow Loyalty (Group) to be used. One of them has to NEED help, and the Passion use has to reflect that.

II.8.) Chivalric Bonus
Instead of 80 or 96, it is tiered. Honor is added to the list of 6 Chivalric Traits. When you have 3 of them at 16+, you get +1 Armor of Honor, 5 gives +2 and all 7 gives +3. Counter-Traits (like Proud) gives -1 to the trait counter, so an exemplar Pagan (Proud 16+) who has all the other 5 Traits and Honor passion at 16+, would result in 5+1-1 = 5, which means +2 Armor of Honor. The nice thing about this system is that it actually forces (through Traits & Honor) the chivalric PK to act Chivalric. With the 80 limit, it was possible to have Honor 5 and 6 Traits at 13-14 level, which I very much disliked.

II.9.) First Aid: Success = Healing Rate, instead of 1d3, and Critical is double the Healing Rate of the character being aided.

II.10.) Unused Glory Bonus Point = Fate Point
This is a big change and probably would be worth its own chapter, but still. In short, when you cross over each full 1000 Glory, you get a Glory Bonus Point. Normally, you use this right away in Winter Phase, but in our house rule, you can save it for later. Not only that, but you can use it as a fate point, AFTER the roll has already been made. In an opposed resolution, it gives the opponent a failure and you a success, so you can counteract enemy critical hits with it. This makes it rather powerful (in our previous campaign, one PK took Lancelot out with the help of 3 Glory Points that she had as a new character from a rather illustrious lineage), perhaps too powerful. The other 'downside' is that it does slow down character progression some: since the Players hoard the GBPs to keep their characters alive (metagaming aspect), it means that they do not use them for increasing their skills or stats. However, most of the time, this evens out as they often use the GBP to counteract a critical hit that would cause a major wound, and hence they would have needed to use the point to regain the lost stat point anyway.

II.11.) Ties in combat
If the two combatants tie in combat (but see II.1. on the crit-crit change as well), they both hit. Shields protect normally. If one of them is using a Sword (normal or Great) and the other isn't, then the non-sword is broken and does NOT do any damage.

III.) GLORY AWARDS

III.1.) Combat Glory
This is closer to 4th edition, 50 Glory for a young knight, 100 for veteran one, and so forth. I pretty much eyeball the 'challenge level' to an average knight and then decide the Glory. I also give 20% for First Blood duels, since there is always the chance of that one unlucky critical killing or Major Wounding a PK.

III.2.) Marriage Glory
This is something I have changed a lot. First of all, when a Lady character walks down the aisle to marry a knight or above, she gets 1000 Glory. This is her 'knighting'. Then instead of 100% of each other's Glory, it is 20% (including the 1000 from above) + some bonuses for wealth, dowry, APP and wedding feast. This means that there is some point in trying to marry as Glorious character as possible. I would be quite tempted to make it just 10% Glory, so that the ceiling would be at 10K for knight, but this would take an average of 150 Glory off from what the husband gets. Dunno. It hasn't been a big enough issue thus far, since thanks to the change in Childbirth Table (see IV.6 below), the wives live far longer, so remarrying is rarer.

III.3.) Title Glory: Follows BotE.

III.4.) Skill/Court Glory: Instead of flat 10 Glory, they get Glory equal to their APP score.

III.5.) NO Annual Glory for Chivalric or Religious Bonus: The traits needed (see II.8.) give their own Annual Glory already. Adding extra 100 a pop would give way too much Annual Glory for essentially staying home (total 180+ per year for Religious), and swamp the Adventuring Glory. Which I very much dislike.

III.6.) Glory awards are awarded after the situation has been resolved, rather than at Winter Phase. Since we usually play 2-4 sessions per game year, it is easier for all concerned that I give out the glory at the end of the each battle, while everyone still recalls what the heck just happened. Also, it might be of interest if they gain a Glory Bonus Point (see II.10.). Annual Glory is still gained at the end of the Winter Phase. And speaking of...

IV.) WINTER PHASE

I should mention at the start that we generally play 2-4 sessions per game year, rather than the usual 1 session = 1 year. Also, we pre-roll the Manorial stuff (luck, harvest) and the family events at the end of the previous winter phase, so I (as the GM) can go through the tables at my leisure to match events to rolls, and then try to weave that into the year's adventures, if it matches, or just have it ready when the PKs return home. This is why we can use the longer resolution systems such as the Harvest System and Extended Luck/Family events Tables.

IV.1.) Experience checks
I try to be very generous with checks, and I recommend other GMs to do likewise. In short, if I am asking for a player to roll a skill/trait/passion and it succeeds, crits or fumbles, I will give a check. At the end of the year, I generally give 1 trait/passion more and 1-3 skills depending how many they have already gotten, to represent what has been going on off-camera. I do not generally roll a Solo, since this replaces it. But see IV.2 below. Paladin's Personal Event Table is also worth looking at, and something I am thinking of stea... adapting for our campaign!

IV.2.) Economic Circumstances: Income
We use £10 manors with the normal income resulting in Standard of Living £6 for a married knight with a family, and £1 discretionary funds. However, we do use a homebrew harvest system (http://kapresources.wpengine.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-2234.html), modified from Book of the Manor, and use the Extended Manorial Luck tables (By Andrew Williams with suggestions by BigSteveUK & Spoonist) that were posted on Nocturnal Forum.

However, if I'd be starting a campaign again, I might use something simpler, like Atgxtg's suggestion of 2d6+3 variable income (I'd just roll once for the whole county to get the idea how bad the general harvest is). Then I'd modify each manor's income with +£1 for successful Stewardship or Folk Lore (+£2 on a crit), and +£1 for Gentlewoman. Then I'd allow 'squeezing' with Arbitrary, Selfish, and Cruel checks, +£1 each. This would be quite easy to manage and would be a temptation of sorts for the PKs to fall into 'Sins'. If the PK is not squeezing, I'd have them roll Just and get a check on a success, as in the 'Your Own Land' solo. £3 of the income goes to other stuff (soldiers, court), so you could just roll 2d6 instead. Then the rest would be used for the maintenance (below) or something else. I do allow the PKs to stash their extra income as treasure at 1:1 rate, rather than BotE's 2:1 rate.

IV.3.) Economic Circumstances: Grade of Maintenance / Standard of Living
All the bonuses and penalties are removed as the first thing. Instead, living at a higher rate than ordinary (£4 unmarried knight and £6 married with kids) is simply conspicuous consumption, at +10 Glory per extra £1, up to 100 Glory, and after that +1 Glory per £1. The lower Maintenance I would penalize thusly: (paid/normal)*Annual Glory (note, this lowers the rate new Annual Glory is gained, it doesn't lower his Glory Total). If the knight goes below half of his normal (£2 or £3), then hard choices have to be made, since he can no longer support his horses. Time to start selling them, and I would not let them be automatically replenished. Granted, a knight who has gotten into this dire straits should start squeezing his peasants, and/or asking his friends and liege lord for help. That being said, I have never seen a PK go Impoverished. Finally, I would also give a penalty to Court rolls for poor attire, -1 per £1 maintenance missed or some such. I ignore the Clothing Value: the normal wardrobe and keeping it up in style is already included to the Maintenance. However, if the PK has spent money on some lavish clothing (conspicuous consumption again), then that value might decrease from tear and wear.

If a PK were to try to deliberately hoard money by living under the norm, I would definitely give +1 Selfish and -1 or more to Honor. It simply shouldn't be done by a knight. The only exception I'd allow is if it is to pay a ransom or a tribute or something of that sort, but that is not hoarding, per se.

IV.4.) Horse Survival
Horses are supposed to live for close to 30 years. Well, not in Pendragon! This table is the main reason my players refuse to spend money on finer horses and sell any looted horses as fast as possible. I am currently lowering the death chance to just 1 instead of 1-2, but even that kills off 50% of the horses by the 14th year Since the new horse is already 5+ years old, this results in an average lifespan of about 20 years, which is much better than the 12 years that 1-2 gives, but it might still be a bit low. Of course, some of the captured horses might simply be older horses and die because of that.

IV.5.) Random Marriage Table
This is fixed in Book of the Entourage. I am generally quite against giving out heiresses on a random roll, but at least in the BotEnt, you really, really must be swimming in Glory and brownie points before you can roll an heiress, unlike here, where you can luck onto one with a simple 1d20+1 roll.

As a simple fix, I would just tell the Players that they can easily get a wife appropriate to their title as their first wife (so eldest daughter of a vassal knight, as the default), and then one step (so a younger daughter of a vassal knight) down as the second if they already have a son. Anything more than that (widows, heiresses) takes some serious roleplaying (buttering up the liege/guardian, doing heroic deeds/quest).

Tragedy: Roll the Woman's CON again. Critical: Unhealthy child born. Success: Take a Major Wound, child dead/dies within days. Failure: NPC women die, unhealthy child born; PC women take mortal wound (3 major wounds), unhealthy child born. Fumble: Mortal wound, barren for life (which can be good for future survival), child dead/dies within days. Also, with NPC women, I'd just have -1 CON per major wound, since their other stats are not tracked. The CON can just be the cultural average (Cymric Women 13-14).

IV.7.) Child Survival Table
I hate this one as well, but at least it is fixed in BotE (Family Survival Table). However, since I am lazy, we are currently using a 1-2 death during 1st year, 1 death thereafter, stop rolling once the kid is 5. But the suggestion in the above thread, rolling 1d20 until the child is 7, 1 = death, would work fine too, resulting in about 70% survival rate. In any case, the table in KAP 5.2 needs to be fixed, since it would have only 20% of the kids surviving.

IV.8.) Family Events
These tables are next to useless, too. Paladin has a much better one. I am currently using the Extended Family Events tables (by Andrew Williams (Sir Pramalot), Spoonist and others) from Nocturnal Forums. As it has over hundred entries, it is not the quickest thing to peruse, but as stated in the beginning, I have time in between sessions. Otherwise, I would heartily recommend Paladin's Family Events table (although I would scale down the promotion to a simple landed knight, as it would seriously scupper the plot if PKs have several dukes and counts as family members).

However, all of these have a problem on the Family Member roll, since generally Parents and Grandparents are already dead, and many of the siblings are non-existing or dead, too. An elegant solution was presented (alas, I forget who it was) on the Nocturnal Forum of simply listing your family members by name and relation on a sheet with 20 rows, and then rolling 1d20 each year to see who gets picked. If it is an empty row, no family event this year!

IV.9.) Training and Practice: instead of 1d6+1 skill points (up to 15), it is flat 5 skill points (up to 15). Remember the half price up to 10 (see I.3).

When it comes to Damage:
4d6 typical footsoldier or a very young or an older knight
5d6 veteran footsoldier or a typical knight
6d6 a really big guy, probably a local champion/bodyguard

Saxons get a small nudge. Their spear levy is likely still 4d6, but their professional soldiers and many raiders are 5d6. Their elite is solidly 6d6, and champions can be 7d6, with berserkers even 8d6.

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I'm going to steal a bunch of these! How big are the extra bonuses you give towards marriage Glory for wealth etc.?

Feel free. That is why I posted them.

As for wealth, the bonuses are not huge: +1 Glory per 1£ of dowry, and +50 per manor if she is an heiress. I could see revising both up some, especially given how rare the heiresses are. Of course, the husband will then also get the title glory, if he was not landed before.

You can see that the Wedding Feast complies with the Conspicuous Consumption rules. I could see increasing the Glory for both the APP and the Dowry a bit, and bring the Glory down to 10% level instead. Note that I give the same Glory to the woman, too, except that the Glory & Lands are the husband's. Although I could see giving her the heiress of land bonus, if her lands are more extensive than the husband's, instead.

Hmm. I do like the New System in some respects, such as not making the Widows too preferred Glory-wise (the Widow's Portion is still a major lure, of course), and making the Beautiful Wives more desirable Glory-wise, perhaps tempting the Players to overlook things like lower Dowries and such. Which would kinda fit how the PKs might be acting in character.

I might add +1% of Father-in-law's Glory (adding it again, as it is already in Woman's Glory), just to make the Father-in-law's reputation matter a bit more (as it did when using 20% of the Woman's Glory). One would also expect that more Glorious knights would be more able to give larger dowries to their daughters, but that is a bit of a side issue. This way, the daughter of a famous knight (8000 Glory) would be worth 100 Glory more (equal to an heiress) than the average older knight's (Glory 3000) daughter, which fits in my mind.

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II.3.) Opposed resolution when both skills are above 20
When both skills are above 20 (with modifiers, if any), the lower skill is reduced to 20 and this amount is subtracted from the higher skill as well. So if the skills are 29 and 30, they become 20 and 30-(29-20) = 21. This is to counteract the 'tink-tink-boom' where two high skill opponents fighting results in the beheading (crit hit) of the other (who failed to roll a crit) in a few swings. By bringing both skills down closer to 20, the criticals remain a minority

I really like this. My players pump points into their weapons skills spending basically every glory point and most of their first decade of training and practice into their combat skills making the average for the group of 40 year olds like 25 at this point. (Most are in the 5000-8000 glory, one person has had their glory soar into incredible levels and has a correspondingly higher combat skill.) So when they use passions it becomes boring knicks to death interrupted by a sudden brutal beheading. I increased the tie critical damage to 1d6 which sped it up considerably, but it's still very deadly since most of the critical on a 5 or higher when impassioned.

Still, I wanted to check the probabilities on this so that I didn't run into any troubles with decreased chances to win to my players. And, it works really well. I did some random battles and calculated the chance to win and it turns out that the situation where the likelihood of one player criticaling while the other would get a regular success decreases with your changes. It's small, but noticeable. Further, the situation where the higher skill person would "automatically" win (e.g. Skill 26 vs 22, the 26 always wins if the 22 rolls a 1-4) stays the same. All of this while reducing the total number of criticals. So, seems like nothing but good things. The only time when the probabilities are changed drastically are when the situations of one opponent always criticaling such as with a skill of 39 or greater. In those situations, this system strongly works against the higher skill person for obvious reasons.

Overall, I really like this and I'm going to try to introduce it into my game. Thanks!

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I also really like this lady's marriage is equivalent to being knighted for glory plus glory for who they marry. I think that's great and works to the advantage of lady player characters.

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Secondly, in the current campaign, we allow the low skills to be raised half-priced up to 10. So Play 2 -> 10 costs only 4 points. This has had a bit more of an impact, as it does encourage people to rather bring a low skill to 10 than to go from 15 -> 16 in another skill. Although the combat skills are still primary improvements. It has not been especially unbalancing, though, in my mind.

On 9/9/2019 at 6:02 PM, Morien said:

As some of you may be aware, I have become a proponent of skill defaults from Attributes, using something like DEX/2 or APP/2 for pretty much all skills. We have not done that yet, and it might be difficult to implement that fairly while we are in mid-campaign**. But something to think about.

My approach on this is to merge the two.

1) Each skills are linked to an attribute

2) Base skill is unchanged from the RAW

3) Raising a skill up to attribute value is cheaper. Depending on what you prefer, it could be:

3a) HEROIC - half cost up to attribute value and then normal cost from there OR;

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I increased the tie critical damage to 1d6 which sped it up considerably,

That reminds me, I forgot one houserule about ties. I have now added the following to the post:

II.11.) Ties in combat
If the two combatants tie in combat (but see II.1. on the crit-crit change as well), they both hit. Shields protect normally. If one of them is using a Sword (normal or Great) and the other isn't, then the non-sword is broken and does NOT do any damage.